Blogger’s Life On The Road: The Ups And Downs

A travel blogger's life always looks so glamorous: working while travelling the world, being paid to sit on a beach and writing a few lines, sipping cocktails in the sun.

That is, if you have an established blog that is already making money.

But what does a travel blogger's life look like when that's not the case yet and you are trying to build something while on the road?

Here is an overview of the ups and downs I have experienced so far in my (short) travel blogger's life.

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Why start a travel blog in the first place?

Nowadays, the market of blogs is oversaturated. Especially for travel blogs. So many people want to live that dreamy blogger's life with location independent working.

So why the hell did we start one?? Why now? 

The love of words and bilingualism

I have always had this love of words (huge logophile here!) since my youngest childhood.

My parent's families originally come from two different parts of Belgium. To make sure you understand why that's important, here's a little geography-lesson:

Belgium's peculiar culture

The lovely little country of Belgium, with its roughly 11 million inhabitants, has one very important particularity: there are three official languages.

Don't get me started on politics, geographical subdivisions and such. It's so complicated, even I, as a born and raised Belgian, mix up things sometimes.

Also, that multilingualism often causes problems as with different languages come different mentalities.

Anyway, the three langages are German, French and Dutch. All of which I am fluent in.

Family background

My mum's family all come from the small German speaking community (about 70.000 inhabitants), next to the borders with Luxembourg and Germany. That's where I grew up as well.

On my dad's side, my grandpa got a job in that same part right after WWII because he was fluent in German. Back then, people from that part of Belgium weren't allowed on official government posts.

Truth is, this part of Belgium got germanised during both WWI and WWII - but they were Belgian in-between wars. It's pretty complicated and I suggest you'll get a Wikipedia-article or something to read the whole story.

Fact is, there had been a bit of collaboration with the nazis and because of the language, the Belgian government didn't trust the people living here.

My grandpa comes from the French speaking side of Belgium, specifically the province in the deep South of the country, next to Luxembourg as well.

French was his mother-tongue but the dialect they speak in that region is similar to Luxembourgish and German. And so when he applied for the job as undersecretary of state for my home town, they accepted him gladly.

Transmitting languages

My grandparents thus moved from the French to the German speaking part. My dad and his siblings all spoke French at home but obviously learned German in school.

And because my dad savoured the huge advantage of being bilingual, he decided to do the same for us. And I will be forever grateful for that!!

So at home, we speak German (or a variation of it, our local dialect) with my mum and her family and French with my dad and his family. 

Huge advantages

Growing up with two different languages, especially from two distinct language family (Germanic and Romance/Latin), makes learning additional languages super easy.

Especially regarding accents and sounds. Hence my ability to fluently speak English, Dutch, Spanish and Luxembourgish.

I started learning Arabic last year but due to a lack of time, I didn't get very far. But some of my Arabic speaking refugee-students (I taught English at a refugee-camp for a while) told me I had a talent for their accent.

And so that's one of the languages I'll definitely start again as soon as I have the time.

A blogger's life during a world-trip

Enough about my language background. What I actually wanted to show were the ups and downs of a newbie blogger's life.

Especially one that is currently on a world trip.

Good and regular content are key

This is what I struggle the most with during this world trip: the regularity.

According to several blogging-experts, you need to deliver good, well-written and complete articles on a regular basis.

For a travel-blog, that means guides that have at least 3000 words every time.

If you are just writing about your personal experience from a certain trip or how you felt when doing this or that hike, it's fine. I can easily fill pages and pages about that personal stuff.

But if your want to deliver useful content, it takes a lot more time.

Whenever I make one of my guides, I research a lot. I need the current prices, the exact location as well as things that people travelling to a certain country absolutely should know.

When I make food-guides or just add restaurant tips in these posts, I have to check first if that restaurant is currently still operating and what their website is.

To understand what I mean, have a look at some of the bigger blogposts below.

The biggest issue in a non-established blogger's life: time management

This is an important one. It's one thing to write about past travels. I have travelled quite a bit already so trust me, I have plenty of content that has yet to be published. I don't have a lack of inspiration.

But combining writing at least one blogpost every week and travelling around at the same time is problematic.

I am currently on a sabbatical (read the whole world trip background in the About Us - section if you like) and so I only had one year in total to do this world trip.

But then Corona hit and there were only six months left. Naturally, we're trying to see as much as possible during this time.

And here's where our dilemma lies: do we focus on building the blog in order to maybe, someday, eventually make money out of it?

Or do we put all our time and effort into exploring as it might be over soon?

Technology in a blogger's life

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It's more than just writing

Photography skills

While there are tons of bloggers who only use stock-photos to illustrate their posts, we don't belong to that group.

I am passionate about photography and we also try to build a social-media presence (check out themarveloustravelers on Instagram) as well. 

So having beautiful pictures is a must! While iPhones nowadays create insane photos, I prefer taking most of them with a proper dslr as they just have a higher quality and more depth.

But the iPhone takes incredible pictures because the editing-treatment happens instantly. And with the dslr, you'll need to edit the pictures manually afterwards. 

The main difference is that if I want to use the phone-pictures for anything else than social media - forget about it. I won't be able to print high quality pictures in larger formats for example.

The fun of editing

I love editing pictures! Really! I like to develop different styles for each photo-series. But it is a time-consuming process.

Mainly because I tend to take every photo in ten different perspectives. Meaning that I first have to go through a selection process and then start the editing.

What makes it slightly easier is the fact that I save each style as a so-called preset. This means that all the settings are saved as a group and I just have to apply this kind of 'filter' on my pictures and play around with one or two settings at the maximum (generally lighting).

If you want to have a try, we are currently offering three FREE presets in order to give something back to our readers and followers.

Check them out! I also made a handy pdf explaining exactly how to install them.

Technical issues in a blogger's life

Wifi-dependency 

First of all, when blogging on the road, you are absolutely dependent of a good wifi-connexion. Which, depending on where you're off to, can be a pickle. 

This also changed the way we look at accommodations: during our regular trips, it doesn't matter if the internet is good and so the choices are far larger. 

Also, we can't book as spontaneously as we want, meaning just going to a location and ask for a room on the spot. Nope, we have to check on Booking if the wifi got good reviews...

When the technology fails

Second issue: you relie completely on modern technology, i.e. computer, camera, phone, etc.

During the Cusco-part of our trip, my computer-screen started doing weird. Huge white lines appeared across the screen, making using it quite difficult. Okay, it was downright impossible as I couldn't see a single thing.

And while we were doing the insanely beautiful Colca Canyon tour, my backup-computer, meaning my tablet, ALSO started showing white stripes!!

Can't tell you how happy I was...

Not to mention that my backup-backup-computer - my phone - got stolen in Costa Rica (read the full story of how we got mugged while driving in Costa Rica). Talking about a curse.

Trying to save what can be saved

We found a certified Apple-repairer in Cusco - yay!

So we brought him both the computer and the tablet. The tablet was no biggie, he told us he just had to put a new screen and it would be done the next day.

That's what we did.

Next big issue in a travelling blogger's life: short stays

Because we are trying to make the most out of the time left, we don't stay longer that a few days in each city.

Same thing with Cusco: we were about to had to the Dominican Republic. The tickets were already booked.

But sadly, changing the screen of my computer would have required three whole weeks as they have to get the parts in the US and ship them to Peru.

So my computer couldn't be fixed.

Tablet works again - not!

The next day, we went back to the repairer and - oh joy! - the tablet worked!

So we boarded the plane to the Dominican Republic.

We just arrived in Santo Domingo and had spent the whole flight watching series on the tablet - no problem at all.

I wanted to open the tablet to work on the next blogpost and BAM! The screen is screwed up again! I asked the guy in Cusco about it and he told me he could fix it for free if I brought it. 

But we were already in the next country. On an island.

To the repair-shop, again

We found another certified Apple repairer in the capital. He put yet another new screen. We went to pick it up.

And as I am currently drawing a lot on my Ipad, I immediately tried it out. But there was like a big stripe in the middle of the screen where nothing happened!

So the guy told us that there is another part, other than the screen, broken as well. And it would cost another 100 € to fix it.

We didn't have a choice so we had it done. In total, with the three repairs, we paid about 280 € for a tablet that was already a refurbished one and cost 260 € when we bought it.

It sucks, I can tell you!

Is a blogger's life really that cool?

It's hard, it's a lot of work, it's time consuming and comes with a lot of problems. 

Also, it takes an awful lot of time to even begin to make money out of it. And we are still very far away.

But when you're passionate about writing, telling stories, photography, etc. it's definitely something worth working for!

If we could make this our living, I would be more than happy spending more hours than at my current job working on this blog.

The freedom you get of working from anywhere in the world is just awesome. 

So we'll keep building it and we'll see how far we get.

Maybe one day, we'll find out that it's not the kind of life we dreamed of. It might be that, once I'm back at my work, I don't want to leave it.

Who knows?

Only time will tell 🙂

I hope this post could inspire you but at the same give you a realistic insight on what a travel blogger's life looks like when you are just starting out.

Feel free to comment, pin and share this article to support us!

As ever

xx

Cyn

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